Heart-Warming

Donald Sensing points to a nifty new ad hoc invention -- designed by an Army sergeant stationed in Baghdad -- that can warm up injured people three times faster than commonly used hospital devices: it's called the "Chief Cuddler".

As the 25-year-old ward master, from Yorktown, Va., for the Surgical Intensive Care Unit (SICU) of the 28th Combat Support Hospital, from Fort Bragg, N.C., which is currently deployed in support of Operation Iraq Freedom, Irby said they needed something to warm patients who have lost a large amount of blood.

The result is a makeshift blue cardboard box, which resembles a young child’s playhouse, but it is more commonly known to staff at the 28th CSH as the “Chief Cuddler.”

“We receive critically-injured patients who often suffer from mass amounts of blood loss,” Irby said. “With blood loss the patient’s temperature will start to drop. With this drop in temperature the patients lack the ability to stop the internal bleeding.”